by Mark Tully
‘Now you see how my clients will recognize me,’ he said. ‘They ask where is the Hanuman panda, and they are directed to my flag. Now pay me my twenty-five rupees quickly – I must get back to my clients.’
A group of pilgrims with shaven heads were sitting in a circle on the sand in front of the panda's stall. Two scruffy young men dressed in trousers and sweaters were moving round the pilgrims asking them how much they were going to pay for the ceremony for their dead. An old man was proving particularly recalcitrant. ‘Come on, make your commitment,’ said one of the pandas irascibly. ‘Don't waste my time.’ Another pilgrim wanted to offer only twenty-five rupees. The panda told him, ‘That's not enough. Other people have given 101.’ Eventually the pilgrim handed over fifty-one rupees. The panda pocketed the cash and was turning away when his client asked anxiously, ‘Aren't you going to bless me?’ The panda bent down, patted his head and said a brief mantra. The pilgrim touched his feet. The priest laughed and said, ‘Now you've had your blessing on the cheap.’ The pandas were very skilled operators – they knew exactly when to upbraid, when to cajole and when to give up to get the most out of their clients without losing any of them.
The pandas make no attempt to hide their venality, but I discovered that even a man as educated as Trinath Mishra, the deputy inspector general of police, used their services. He told me a story about his own family panda. ‘After my father's death, the panda demanded money for a bicycle for him to ride in the next life. I complained that it was beneath my father's dignity to ride a bicycle – he only ever travelled by horse or elephant. Of course that was a stupid mistake – the panda immediately demanded the price of an elephant. When I refused, he insisted on the money for the bike, saying that my father's body would be lighter now, so he would find it easier to cycle.
‘Priests in all religions are rogues’, D. I. G. Mishra went on, ‘but they have their function. They are middlemen, in between you and God. Such middlemen are everywhere. If you want to travel by rail, you have to take a ticket from a booking-counter - the clerk is a middleman. What is the state but a middleman between individuals and society? Someone has to perform the rites for the dead. My ancestors knew that the pandas were villains, but they used them, so what right have I to show disrespect to my father by robbing him of these rites?’
The pandas feed on the carrion of superstition and justify the Indian élite who write off Hinduism as backward, priest-ridden mumbo-jumbo – a brake on progress and development, the gods of the twentieth century. In this century, Indians like the Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, the philosopher president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and, of course, Mahatma Gandhi have shown the wisdom of Hinduism. Hinduism has, in the words of R. C. Zaehner, the former professor of Eastern religions and ethics at Oxford, ‘established itself firmly in world opinion as one of the greatest and most profound religions of the world’. But in the same chapter of his book, Hinduism, he expresses concern about the future of the religion:
In Europe the Reformation gave birth to the Counter-Reformation, and the old Church succeeded in purging itself of the old abuses and in recreating itself in a new image. Hindu orthodoxy at present shows no signs of such a renovation: it has lost its hold on the towns and, in the opinion of many, it is only a question of time before it loses its hold on the villages, for one of the paradoxes of Hinduism has always been the yawning gap which separates its higher manifestations from the frankly superstitious and magical practices that go to make up the religious fare of the rural masses. With the spread of Western education right down to the lowest strata of society and the progressive industrialization of the country the whole religious structure of Hinduism will be subjected to a severe strain; but such has been its genius for absorption and adaptation that it would be foolhardy to prophesy how it will confront this new and unprecedented crisis.
At the Mela, I found little or no evidence that Hindu orthodoxy was purging itself.
I tried the shankaracharyas, but they offered little or nothing. The shankaracharya of Puri, I was told, was a renowned scholar, but when I went to hear him preach he was challenging all comers to disprove his contention that sati, or widow-burning, was sanctioned by the Hindu scriptures. The shankaracharya of Kanchipuram was denouncing family planning, and the shankaracharya of Dwarka was performing complicated and esoteric rituals.
I turned to the akharas, the stars of the Kumbh Mela. Their camps were guarded by ferocious sadhus who seemed to know only two words: ‘Get out.’ As sadhus had already broken one television crew's camera and had threatened another crew with bows and arrows, I was not inclined to argue with them – especially as they had almost certainly heard the ‘BBC’ rumour. I did find some 300 men preparing to be initiated as sadhus, sitting in a group behind the akharas' compounds. They wore just a small cloth tied tightly between their legs. Three barbers were shaving their heads and beards, using cut-throat razors without benefit of shaving-soap. Some of the initiates were squatting with their back to the road, shaving their own pubic hairs. Fully clad sadhus wielding silver staves were keeping the chattering holy men in order and moving on the curious like me. From a safe distance I noticed that most of the novices were young men, although there were a few who were probably taking sannyas. One young man was deformed. They all seemed happy and relaxed, not in the least solemn like Christian novices or ordinands.
One part of the Juna akhara – said to be the most ferocious of them all – was open to the public. I passed through the gate with some trepidation and found two lines of tents with a small temple at the end. Some sadhus were sitting outside their tents; others were asleep inside. Near the temple, a naked sadhu was sharing a silver chillum or pipe of hashish with two Europeans. Another naked sadhu, his body smeared with ash and his eyes closed, was sitting motionless in the lotus position in front of a trident, deep in meditation. A few small coins had been thrown on to the blanket spread out in front of him. A more prosperous ascetic was sitting on a leopard skin, talking to a small group of villagers. There was a constant stream of villagers passing in front of the tents. Suddenly I heard shouts of ‘Fire!’ Turning my head, I saw clouds of black smoke billowing up from a straw hut behind the tents. Saffron-robed sadhus clambered on to the roof of the hut and threw buckets of water over the flames. The fire began to sputter and died down before it could spread. Fire is one of the great hazards of the Mela because of the countless open hearths, the acres of straw spread for bedding and the miles of canvas tents. A vast tented pavilion had burnt down two days earlier.
The burnt-out hut was in the next-door camp, which belonged to the Niranjani akhara. A special police station had been set up to keep the peace between the different akharas. The officer in charge, Ravi Shankar Mishra, rushed to the Niranjanis, and in the general chaos I managed to get past the ferocious watchmen too. I found a group of saffron-robed sadhus sitting on a raised platform covered with a thatched roof: the administrative headquarters of the akhara. I could hear the leaders of the akhara and the police shouting at each other by the burnt-out tent. The sadhus told me to take my shoes off and come and sit with them. By good fortune they were BBC listeners, so they were anxious to hear about the rumour and invited me to drink tea. When I asked what the trouble was, one of the younger ascetics said angrily, ‘Those Juna sadhus smoke hashish and throw the burning ash into our camp. They started the fire.’ Another sadhu said, ‘Those people are all thieves and ne'er-do-wells. They are always causing trouble.’
The argument with the police died down and the secretary of the akhara, Mahant Rama Krishna Giri, came round the corner with Superintendent Mishra and his party. The mahant, or priest, was a sadhu wearing a full beard and a turban tied like a Sikh's. He had the strong, good-humoured face of a Sikh farmer too, but he was dressed in the saffron robes of a Hindu ascetic and had a Hindu tilak on his forehead. He and the police came on to the platform and discussed the fire. The superintendent sided with the Niranjanis and agreed to set up another watch-tower so that he could keep
a closer eye on the Juna sadhus. The topic of conversation then changed to religion. I found myself listening to a discourse on the Mahabharat, one of the great Hindu epics, by Superintendent Mishra. It appeared that the administration had indeed chosen the Mela police force with great care, and that they were all men of God. The papers later reported that the Niranjani and Juna sadhus had actually drawn swords, but I saw no sign of this.
When the police had left, I asked the mahant what the purpose of having akharas was now that there was no longer any need for armed sadhus to protect Hindu ascetics. He replied, ‘The akharas are still needed to protect our religion. There are lots of new religions – more than before. They are all propagating their beliefs. We through our mahatmas help to keep people aware of Hinduism, otherwise Christians encourage people to leave their religion. They offer them economic benefits. We have our mahatmas in the villages. They hold assemblies and run classes telling people how to live, how to protect their country and their religion. We go to the villages and teach children, “Awake, awake, dwellers in the land of Bharat, protect your religion and country.”’ His voice got louder and louder, and he shook his clenched fists as he got carried away by evangelical fervour. ‘For the sake of your country, for the sake of your religion, wake up, wake up dwellers in the land of Bharat,’ he shouted. ‘Wake up to defend Bharat. Be holy and live by the traditions of your faith. Serve the humble and afflicted. To serve the people is to serve God.’
The mahatmas are itinerant preachers, travelling for eight months every year and staying in a monastery for four. The Niranjanis have centres all over India, which are governed from the headquarters in Allahabad. They are administered by an elected committee of sixteen members.
The mahant was not best pleased when I suggested he must be collecting a lot of money at the Mela. ‘We do not beg,’ he said firmly. ‘So many people nowadays say sadhus are beggars. We are not. Food, drink and all necessities are provided to all our sadhus by the akharas. We also provide food and shelter for the destitute. So, if we help beggars, how can we be beggars ourselves?’
‘But where does all the money come from to run such a big organization?’
‘If anyone wants to make a donation, we accept it. But we don't beg. We also have property left to us from the days of the rajas and the maharajahs.’
‘Do you have a strict routine?’
‘Yes. We get up at four in the morning. We pray, calling on the name of Shiva, then we bathe in the Ganges. During the day there are other prayers, rituals, but we spend much time in social service, office work, etc. In the evening we again remember God and go to bed at ten o'clock.’
‘In the middle of all that, many of your sadhus find time to listen to the BBC.’
‘Apparently,’ laughed the mahant.
‘I can understand your preaching and your social work, but surely the naked nagas are an anachronism.’
‘We do have nagas. They do nothing but puja [acts of worship] and bhajans [hymns]. They are people who have made sacrifices: they have given up everything – they do not even touch money – and they all have to live together. There is no need for the nagas now, but we keep them because we want our old traditions to survive. They should not be destroyed but preserved.’
‘In the West there is a great shortage of vocations to religious orders. Do you have a problem?’
‘We get plenty of bad people coming to us,’ the mahant chuckled. ‘There are plenty of khana [food] wallahs. They think: if I wear the clothes of a sadhu, people will give me all I want and I won't have to work ever again. They seem to think that an ashram means aish [pleasure] and aram [rest]. There is definitely a shortage of people who want to become real sadhus.’
‘Do you recruit young boys?’
‘Lots of childless people promise to give a son to the ashram if their prayers are answered, but such boys will not stay here unless they are mentally suited to the life. Then some young men also join, and of course there are people who come to us to take sannyas.’
‘Will you take people from any caste?’
‘The recruits must be Brahmins, Kshatriyas or Vaishyas [the three ‘twice-born’ or upper castes – priests, warrior-rulers, and traders/farmers] .’
‘So you would not take Harijans, for instance?’
‘No. Being sadhus is not their traditional occupation according to our scriptures.’
‘But isn't that practising caste discrimination?’ I asked.
‘If that's a tradition, it's a tradition. Harijans have plenty of other things to do – especially nowadays. They are the most pampered people in India, with reservations for jobs everywhere. Why should we reserve positions for them in our akhara?’
There didn't seem to be much progress we could make on that point, so I moved on to the background of those who were allowed to join the akhara.
‘You will never find that out,’ said the mahant. ‘All our sadhus should be free of all family ties. A sadhu is not even allowed to tell you where he comes from. They must be prepared to work for the good of their religion and country.’
‘In the Juna akhara I saw sadhus smoking hashish. Do you allow that?’
‘You haven't seen any hashish-smoking here,’ shot back the mahant.
‘How many sadhus will there be in your procession?’
‘We have about 5,000 robed sadhus and 200 nagas here. We have as many as 22,000 sadhus in ashrams all round the country.’
The mahant was very busy: it was a festival day and, as the secretary of the akhara, he had to organize food for thousands of people. While we were talking, he gave instructions to the munim, or accountant, squatting behind a low desk and to the others milling around the akhara's headquarters. The munim was making entries in a big ledger as sadhus came and handed over or withdrew money. Some supplies ordered yesterday appeared to have got lost, and the tractor-driver who was meant to have brought them could not be found. Volunteers from outside the order, wearing big saffron rosettes, were sent to look for him. The mahant was hoarse from shouting orders, and so I left him to more important matters than satisfying my curiosity.
The Mela seemed a little more crowded, but there was still no sign of the millions for whom the administration had catered, and the big bathe was now just three days away. I talked to a retired postmaster who had taken the full vows of a kalpvasi. He said, ‘I am very happy because everyone is worshipping the Almighty. There is a fine atmosphere, because everyone is worshipping Lord Ram.’ A family of five was sitting at the side of the road eating stale chapattis and puffed rice. The head of the family was a farmer from a village about 100 miles away. He was looking for the sword-sign panda who operated in his district. He thought the priest would help him with accommodation, but he didn't know how to find him. A stationmaster, fresh from his bathe in the Ganges and with a large V-shaped tilak on his brow, had been humiliated by the late running of the special train in which he had travelled to the Mela. There was also a retired schoolmaster in the full garb of an ascetic – saffron-coloured cotton robes and a string of sacred rudraksha beads. He had recently taken sannyas, and had found immense peace and happiness in his new life. ‘I used to read in books about all the pilgrimage and historic places in India,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Now I am seeing them for myself. I even visit mosques and churches, and I believe that you should respect their rules, so I cover my head if I go into a mosque. I stay in ashrams and I am given food and donations, but I never beg.’
There was no question of begging when it came to Vibhav Bhushan Uphadhaya. He was a former attorney general of the state of Uttar Pradesh, still a lawyer with a prosperous practice in the Allahabad High Court, and a friend of my host, Sant Bax Singh. Sant Bax had introduced him as a man who combined a very sharp mind with traditional beliefs. Vibhav Bushan's tent was in the centre of the Mela and large enough to have an ancient green Ford Prefect parked in the forecourt. He welcomed me warmly, and I sat down to gather more nectar for my honey. The loudspeakers blaring the messages of the re
ligious organizations were competing with the public-address system broadcasting appeals from pilgrims who were lost. ‘Shri Naresh Yadav, from village Ramgarh, district Gaya, Bihar, please come to the Congress Party's lost-and-found bureau where his wife and family are waiting for him. Will Ram Adhar from Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, please come to the Congress Party's lost-and-found bureau to collect his son.’ The Congress Party had cornered the lost-and-found business because of its value as subliminal publicity.
I asked Vibhav Bhushan why he had chosen to set up his tent in the middle of this cacophony when he had a substantial house in Allahabad.
‘I would like the Mela to be more peaceful, but the commercialization and loudspeakers are neither here nor there. The object of coming here is that you can take your baths easily and you hope the whole atmosphere will be charged with religious feelings.’
‘But is it?’
The lawyer roared with laughter, ‘Well, you hear an awful lot of discourses, bhajans and religious drama on the loudspeakers.’
Vibhav Bhushan came from a religious family. He could remember his grandfather as a sannyasi. He himself was a strict vegetarian and teetotaller, but his Brahminical code did not ban tobacco. Sitting cross-legged on a collapsible chair, surrounded by the joint family he headed, the elderly lawyer looked very much a patriarch. His fine head of silver hair, bushy eyebrows, neat moustache and even the hairs protruding from the lobes of his ears seemed to have been deliberately cultivated to give an impression of severity – an impression he doubtless put to good use when prosecuting on behalf of the government. But his eyes gave him away: they were lively and alight with humour.
